Rhymes with Transmogrified

The Yankess have lapsed into annual doldrums; the Presidency has fallen into narrow-minded luddite incompetence, and now another esteemed American institution has been irrevocably debased by our 21st century culture. I received the first of the new breed of TV Guide in my mailbox yesterday. Its shape was indistinguishable from the Newsweek and Consumer Reports. It's no longer the distinctive paperback size that sat comfortably on the coffee table and was easy to pitch at the TV screen when some unpleasant news blared from the Idiot Box. In appearance it resembles exactly what it's aimed to become--another fanzine.

I have a personal relationship with this magazine. This is not to brag, but to help define my objections. TV Guide was my entry into the journalism field, and I spent the first four years of my working life as an editor and writer in both the Home and Los Angeles offices. I used to be able to boast that I was one of the most widely read writers in the country, and this was no exaggeration. In those days the circulation for the Guide was greater than any other magazine; it was a national habit. And I was one of a crew writing the plot descriptions of the programs (done quite legitimately from reading the actual scripts, not from culling flaks' p.r. releases). Some of my favorite one-liners I've committed to comic memory--"Pepper poses as a prostitute," (Angie Dickinson's "Police Woman"), "An Interview with First Lay Rosalyn Carter" (okay, that was a typo, but a great one).

But guess what? There are no more capsule descriptions. The core raison d'etre of the old TV Guide, its voluminous and accurate listings, has been undercut by the expansion of choices in the cable universe, and it simply became ungainly to try to encapsulate 200 shows for every hour. So the listings have been significantly reduced to one-liners within a hefty grid, just like what you'd see in a Sunday TV supplement. The concept of the "Close-up" (which were always plums for us to write) has been retained in daily highlight paragraphs for the most popular shows. The only improvement over what I'd get in my LA Times Calendar TV section is that the TV Guide grid is now in full color.

The bulk of the magazine is now devoted to flashy full color pix of fave stars alongside bite-sized commentary that includes a generous share of stale news and stupid gossip items. There's even a column now about the fate of TV romances. A few of the popular features, such as "Hits and Misses" and "Cheers and Jeers" remain, and are in bigger print. (What next? "Hunks and Punks"? "Nuts and Sluts"?). The tone of the writing has also taken a 20% dip in IQ. Bet you won't find the word "transmogrified" anywhere in the issue.

It's not that TV Guide was ever an intellectual bastion. Its most enduring item has always been the demented Crossword puzzle, with stumpers like "I ---- Lucy" (Kick? Fuck? Bled?) Of course, that still remains, with bigger boxes. They've added a version of the Sudoku, using letters instead of numbers, assuming I guess that the intended readership can't cope with integers unless they're on a calculator. But there was a certain dignity to the tone of the magazine in the years it was owned by Walter Annenberg, the late Bootleg-heir/philanthropist, who I'm sure is doing anguished twists and turns in his Mausuleum.

TV Guide has simply and intentionally channelled (pun intended) People Magazine. This is the culmination of a trend that has been at work for years, as the magazine slowly became a shill for popular movies and backed away from any thoughtful commentaries on the role of the powerful medium on American life. Ironically, in the early 80s, a flashy TV fanzine called "Panorama" tried to pull off the exact style that the current TV Guide has adopted. It failed in a year, mainly because it couldn't dent the popularity of the Guide and Sunday supplements. Now TV Guide has been absorbed into the indistinguishable world of gossip rags like a victim in a journalistic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Even at its bargain basement subscription price of 25 cents an issue, I am certain not to renew. I can save those quarters for the laundry, and get by very well on my LA Times Cable mag.